


someday we'll linger in the sun

by Yellow



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, arrell is the Worst but he really loves alyosha, even tho he pretends he doesn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 03:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11304867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yellow/pseuds/Yellow
Summary: a last union before the hard work of saving the world





	someday we'll linger in the sun

**Author's Note:**

> FINE...fine I SHIP IT
> 
> "our love's a complex vintage wine/all rotted leaves and lemon rind/i'd spit you out, but now you're mine"

They settle in front of the fire after Alyosha complains of the cold. Arrell acquiesces, pressing his point about the failings of the Church's infrastructure more pointedly.

Alyosha deflects with soft words and a smile Arrell suspects is mocking him.

“What?” he demands finally, exasperated.

Alyosha tilts his head and smiles wider. His arm brushes Arrell's.

“Are you still so nervous, sitting close to me?”

Arrell sputters.

“I have said nothing to suggest anything of the sort,” he says.

“It is not what you've said but how you've said it,” Alyosha says. “Every so often, you lose your thoughts and repeat yourself. I have not known you a man to be easily distracted.” Alyosha's eyes are dancing. Arrell feels the corners of his mouth pull down.

“Well, you are uniquely distracting,” he mutters, and then Alyosha is pulling him in by the front of his robes.

Alyosha's hands are soft and small. He has a callus from where the quill rubs against his hands, but nothing else: the hands of an academic, a priest. His lips are soft and warm, not chapped from the sun. Arrell wants to keep him this way, soft, thoughtful, whole.

Alyosha draws back.

“Was that so hard?” he teases, and he looks so young.

Arrell sighs, annoyed and embarrassed and aroused.

“Child, you pull me away from my studies far too often. It is best not to indulge you.” And myself, Arrell thinks. He does not pull away, caught by Alyosha's gaze and Alyosha's hand on his cheek.

Alyosha leans in again.

“You call me child but kiss me like a man,” Alyosha says against Arrell's lips. His hand moves to undo the ties of Arrell's robes and then trails up his chest. Arrell shivers. Alyosha's eyes are bright, playful. “Which is it?”

Arrell closes his eyes and says, “I admit I am not sure.”

“I think,” Alyosha says, bending to kiss his neck, “that you should let yourself enjoy the small pleasures He deems fit to give us.”

Arrell wants to protest-there is no time, and besides, the small pleasures are nothing but cruel chance. Distractions. Dangerous. But Alyosha mouths at his pulse point and he cannot speak, just swallow and curl his hands in Alyosha's hair. Alyosha hums. Arrell feels his smile in the press of teeth on his neck.

More and more, Arrell cannot stomach Alyosha's sweet smiles. Arrell should not have him like this, beautiful and trusting by the fire in Arrell's study. Because the world is what it is and what it is is falling apart, and Arrell cannot be there for Alyosha like he so desperately deserves.

And that's it, yes? Arrell has already decided that he will take on the burden of saving them all; he will be there staring down the end of the world until everyone he can save is in their own personal heaven. But Alyosha-gentle, naive, brilliant Alyosha-has done nothing to deserve that fate. Whatever world he wants to save, whatever people he thinks he can tend to-he would be better off safe, for now. Alyosha is the type of person to rebuild a world; Arrell is the type of human sacrifice needed to save one.

He's made his peace.

Perhaps in that world, in that bubble-perhaps there Alyosha can be happy. He can have a husband to come home to, a man who listens to him and adores him and admires the little trinkets he collects and presents to Arrell with such excitement. Perhaps Alyosha will be the one to discover the solution, thousands of years into his own personal heaven. Or perhaps, Arrell thinks, stomach twisting, he will finally get the version of Arrell that makes him happiest-one who is always there, grumbling under his breath in a dusty study, or one who is not there at all.

Arrell looks at the contrast between Alyosha's pale hair and his tan hand. Alyosha is kissing his chest, now, and Arrell pulls him back to look at Alyosha better, brushes his hair back with a tenderness that hits Arrell deep in his chest.

“Tutor?” Alyosha asks. Arrell pushes it all down and offers up a smirk. Alyosha smiles back, and then Arrell topples them both over.

They almost knock over a candlestick, and Alyosha laughs, flushes red. Calls, “Tutor!”

And then Arrell is kissing him, Alyosha's arms coming up around his shoulders.

The arc of history is long, and what it judges more than anything is inaction in the face of coming disaster. Arrell cares less about history than the man under him. Still. He hopes someday they will understand what he does and why he does it.

It is time. It is past time. Time is the one thing they do not have.

He will tell Alyosha tomorrow, Arrell decides. He hopes- he prays Alyosha says yes.

 

Arrell kisses Alyosha like it is the last time he will ever see him. There will be much work in the months to come. He can allow himself one final distraction.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Arrell asks and Alyosha refuses until there is no more opportunity to ask or refuse, not that Arrell ever stops waiting for the few people who make it to the university to have pale skin and pale hair and small, soft hands. 
> 
> (What Arrell never quite lets himself realize: Alyosha's paradise would be sermons in Velas, it would be meals with men of the church and deep discussions of theology over wine, but it would also be Arrell, Arrell, Arrell, in more than just his study: Arrell in the markets with Alyosha, Arrell listening to his sermons and arguing about them afterwards, Arrell in his bed, eyes soft and nothing to worry about, nothing to do.
> 
> But there was work to be done, there is work to be done, and Alyosha's hands are not so soft, anymore.)
> 
> find me @erintherockerin


End file.
